I ask you to build tractors, but you build rockets?

"The signal is stable, and the atmospheric penetration distance is expected to be 150 kilometers!"

The thickness of Venus' atmosphere is far less than that of Earth, only about 250 kilometers.

The flyby will break away at the moment Venus-1 contacts the atmosphere. It will enter a water-drift ballistic trajectory with the help of a small gas engine. It can drop to a maximum altitude of about 90 kilometers and then bounce up. Now, according to the independent judgment of the detector, it is planned to go deep to an altitude of 100 kilometers. Take samples.

This height is almost in the thermosphere and exosphere, and the air pressure is no higher than 10pa. If a Venusian observes from the ground, he can probably see a meteor that flashes briefly.

"Taibai", which is already in orbit, is also assisting in monitoring. Its large mass has brought accurate and powerful short-wave communicators, and has established a solid connection with the two detectors that are about to separate.

"Skitter separation!"

"Height 270 kilometers!"

"Trajectory correction!"

"Lander air shield activated, ready to deploy!"

Each program was activated as expected, and Shen Zuozhou found nothing unusual, which was a good thing.

Before Mars, Venus became the first stop for domestic exploration of extraterrestrial planets.

…

“Our country has made major achievements in extraterrestrial planetary exploration.”

“In the early morning of July 21, the two Venus probes launched in April arrived at their destination at the same time and started normal detection activities.

Among them, the flyby successfully completed gas sampling of Venus' atmosphere at an altitude of 100 kilometers and will return to Earth from March to April next year. The lander completed a soft landing on the surface of Venus at 7:40 a.m.

As of the press release, the Venus-1 soft-landing probe has been working continuously for 134 minutes, surpassing the 127 minutes of the former Soyuz Venus-13, becoming the longest-lasting probe on the surface of Venus.

It will provide us with important scientific information on the origin of planets in the solar system, the existence of extraterrestrial life, etc..."

Robert put down his phone, crossed his fingers and looked at Musk, who was sitting across from him:

"Our adversaries are rapidly advancing toward deep space. They haven't had a Venus lander in decades, and they don't know how long their morning star will survive."

Musk: “I still believe that Mars is the future. Before 2024, I think Mars can be colonized with 1,000 starships and a Mars city sufficient to survive for 100,000 people.

The second starship is about to fly for the first time. We have made major improvements and are moving towards success step by step. "

"..."

Robert knew Musk was expressing dissatisfaction with SpecaX:

Due to the appeasement measures of Sullivan and John, and the fact that the old military industry giants also agreed to make concessions, ensuring that the development cost of Nova is not expected to exceed US$6 billion, and that the cost of a single launch does not exceed US$500 million, NOVA became the candidate to replace SLS. The next generation of giant reusable rockets officially recognized by NACA.

But SpecaX’s starship did not give up. The starship originally had DARPA’s nuclear power transformation plan. NACA decided to use the starship in the early exploration of Mars and unmanned material preparation, while leaving the manned mission to Nova.

He also admitted that the operation was a bit ugly. The positioning of "Nova" is basically the same as that of a starship, but Lockheed guarantees that it can achieve its first flight in 2018. Overall, the evaluation of the plan is more reliable than that of a starship.

In order to enhance the confidence of the starship, Musk's second B7 and SN17 starship combination is ready to be launched at the end of the month, only two months have passed since the first time.

But given the first disastrous failure, Robert still had some doubts.

"Elon, please understand... Why don't you talk about something else? Have you put the FGD system into practical use?"

Lao Ma proposed the flexible gravity system plan more than four months ago. At that time, he was working with Lockheed to modify the Dragon spacecraft. Seeing that the Advance was about to be completed, Robert suddenly thought of it.

Musk nodded: "Of course, the spacecraft has been fully modified and is now undergoing ground testing of the cable. We will be able to launch it for testing next month."

"That's good. I hope you can master this technology as soon as possible and develop a rotation system that can be used in starships or nova. Those are big things of a thousand tons and require extreme toughness."

"I have an idea to use starships for low-Earth orbit space stations."

Musk gestured with his hands:

"The starship can be transformed into a very large on-orbit space station, just like the giant module manufactured by XAP. It can be manufactured quickly and cheaply. If we use it to form a new artificial gravity space station, it will be about the same weight as the Advance. "

The composition method he mentioned is that two starships are connected and rotated with each other, but they are just hard-connected.

"Each starship is 50 meters long. If we connect each other at the tail end and set up a communication pipe in the middle, it will not be much different from the 60-meter diameter of the Advance, and the crew cabin can still reach a gravity of 0.3G.

It can even be four, six, or eight. Each starship can weigh 300 tons. Maybe we can also add a multi-directional connector. No trusses are needed. The overall steel structure only needs to be slightly strengthened to achieve rotational strength. .

As long as the starship succeeds, such a super space station can be built within a year. It is more advanced and more convenient than FGD. I call it a 'super starship'. It can not only operate together, but also be used separately as a lander. Compared with The Advance is structurally more advanced. "

Robert: "This is a good idea, but we still have to solve the problem of getting the starship into orbit first."

"..."

…

Beijing.

The Aerospace Development Commission is very concerned about the landing of Venus 1 and shares data from the base in real time.

Venus 1 performed quite well. It used a combination of bottom inflatable conical air shield and parachute to decelerate. In fact, it was relatively easy to decelerate due to the ultra-high atmospheric pressure on the surface of Venus, mainly due to strong winds and harsh temperatures.

But the storm was okay. "Taibai" had detected no large cyclones in advance. The biggest problem the lander had to face was high temperature.

Of the 3.8 tons of Venus No. 1, 800 kilograms are covered with protective measures. The inside and outside are tightly wrapped with composite materials. It is basically immune to sulfuric acid. It relies on insulation materials to resist high temperatures. I pray that it can withstand the sulfuric acid. Aging corrosion.

But the result was much better than expected. Venus 1 used a hydrazine fuel engine to decelerate for a short time at an altitude of 55km and detected the expected atmospheric environment of 180Kpa, with nitrogen and oxygen concentrations similar to those of the Earth, and other gases with extremely high contents. Low, humans can breathe directly.

After landing, the performance of the protection system was much better than expected. Not only did it complete the most urgent 15-second rapid sampling task, it also maintained contact and survived for more than 300 minutes.

It took less than 200 minutes for AI to complete all sampling and observation plans as planned. This is the maximum time that the ground thinks it may survive. However, Venus-1 was still working well at this time and even passed through "Taibai". A video is being sent back.